


Don’t be alarmed (If I fall head over feet)

by merle_p



Category: Empire Records (1995)
Genre: 1990s, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, First Time, Getting Together, M/M, Miscommunication, Post-Canon, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 08:00:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24846451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/pseuds/merle_p
Summary: Mark gives him a blowjob on a Saturday night in March to the muted soundtrack of Alanis fucking Morissette.
Relationships: Lucas & Joe Reaves, Lucas/Mark (Empire Records)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Don’t be alarmed (If I fall head over feet)

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably by far the most self-indulgent piece I've written in a very long time. But I suppose this is the natural consequence of suddenly going on a major 1990s nostalgia trip and watching this movie about 50 times in a row. So here we are. 
> 
> Title is a line from the 1990s Alanis Morissette hit "Head over Feet".

There’s a small stack of photos from A.J. and Corey’s going-away party sitting on the top of Lucas’ ancient, perpetually humming fridge. 

Once in a while he’ll grab them and leaf through them idly while he’s leaning against the counter with his morning coffee or lounging on the corner bench after a long night at work. 

Sometimes looking at them makes him feel all warm and fuzzy, sometimes they just make him melancholy and sad. 

Always, always they make him feel strangely like there’s something that he’s missing, and though he never really stops looking for it in the pictures, he can also never quite figure out what it is. 

Mark gives him a blowjob on a Saturday night in March to the muted soundtrack of Alanis fucking Morissette. 

The precise how and why are a little unclear, a mystery clouded by the haze of overtiredness, alcohol, and too much weed.

He _is_ aware that A.J. and Corey are in town for spring break, that it is their last night before heading back to Boston, and that all of them are terribly, spectacularly drunk. He’s aware of sitting on the roof of the Empire, with his back against the neon sign that has fizzled out again a good while ago, staring up into the black night sky and wrapping his thin faux-leather jacket more tightly around himself. 

He is aware of Mark tripping over his outstretched legs and just barely catching himself on Lucas’ shoulder, aware of Mark leaning down to smile at him, widely, wildly ….

… and then, somehow, an indeterminate stretch of time later, he finds himself sitting on the lowest steps of the fire escape behind the building, with his pants around his ankles and Mark’s mouth around his dick. 

It does occur to him at some point that it might be easier to process what is happening if only he could tell himself that it isn’t all that special, that it isn’t the best he’s ever had, but the moment this fleeting thought even crosses his mind he already knows that it would be a lie.

For one thing, it’s not like Lucas’ experience is really all that extensive, so his sample size for comparison is relatively small. For another, while Mark’s technique may not be all that superior to that of the couple of girls who volunteered for the task in the past, there is no doubt that no one, _no one_ can beat Mark when it comes to sheer enthusiasm, and Lucas discovers, while his fingers clench more tightly around the metal railing of the ladder, that enthusiasm matters when it comes to blowjobs. 

A lot. 

It matters so much that he doesn’t even have time to warn Mark before his orgasm hits him like a freight train, leaving Mark to blink up at him in surprise as everything he didn’t quite manage to swallow is slowly trailing down his chin, and even in his intoxicated post-orgasmic state, Lucas realizes that this kind of thing isn’t typically considered terribly polite. 

Mark doesn’t seem to mind, though, just shakes his head and laughs a little, then puts his hands on Lucas’ bare thighs to push himself up to standing. 

He grins, looking rather pleased with himself, and presses a kiss against Lucas’ lips, lightning-quick but open-mouthed … and holy shit, Lucas can taste himself on Mark’s tongue, and that really should not be as hot as it is. 

Before he can decide whether to kiss back, though, or say something, do something, _anything_ , there are shouts from the roof, shrill and alarmed, their friends calling out to make sure, somewhat belatedly, that neither of them has fallen off the building and died a horrible, gruesome death. 

Mark quirks an eyebrow at him and gives him a smile that is soft and drowsy, with a trace of mischief. “Later,” he says and dashes off around the corner, leaving Lucas sitting on the stupid fire escape with his dick hanging out of his briefs and the metal stairs digging into his back. 

“So that happened,” he tells his reflection later, at home – where he arrives, miraculously, without getting pulled over and in one piece, considering how much the world around him is still spinning. 

“Indeed it did,” his reflection in the bathroom mirror answers, but fails to provide any deeper insight into what it might mean.

“Why do I even keep you around,” he says, and that’s the last coherent thought he has before stumbling into the bedroom and passing out face forward on top of his sheets. 

On Monday, the Empire is the same store it was the week before, and Mark is the same Mark he always is. He plays metal in the saleroom until someone invokes their veto to cut him off, fights with Warren over the last slice of Eddie’s pizza, and follows Lucas around the store to tell him about some godawful slasher movie he’s seen on VHS the week before. 

Lucas cannot quite figure out whether he feels disappointed or relieved. 

“Mark,” he finally starts, when the vivid description of the killer’s last murder is finally winding down, and Mark freezes in the middle of his sentence and stares at him like a deer in the headlights, mouth open, eyes wide. 

“About Saturday,” Lucas says.

Mark draws his eyebrows together and sucks his bottom lip in between his teeth. 

Lucas suppresses the ridiculous reflex to reach out and soothe the sting of the bite with his thumb. “You know what they say about Vegas?”

“Uh,” Mark breathes, a little nervously, as if he’s expecting it to be a trick question. “You can get Elvis to marry you?”

Lucas blinks. “No,” he says slowly. “Well, I guess, yes. But what I meant was. You know. What happens in Vegas …”

“… stays in Vegas,” Mark completes automatically, nods as if that makes perfect sense, and then he pauses, his face undergoing a complicated series of expressions before he says, in an astonishing moment of utter clarity:

“You want us to not talk about it.”

“Uhm,” Lucas makes, because put like that, it does sound kind of shitty. But then, this must be what Mark would want, isn’t it? Move on, forget, no reason to make things awkward between good friends. 

“Yes,” he barrels ahead, trying for a firm voice to make it seem like he actually has a clue. “That’s what I meant.” 

“Huh,” Mark says. There’s a strange look on his face that Lucas cannot quite decipher – which is unsettling in and of itself, because Mark’s face usually spells out each of his emotions in three different languages, Braille, and iconography. 

But he isn’t given the chance to figure it out, because Warren and Berko choose that moment to walk into the breakroom, and just like that, the time’s over.

“What’s up, guys,” Warren says, and Mark grins, ducks, and slips through the door into the store. 

Lucas stares after him, scratching his head.

“You wanna grab a smoke with me?” Berko asks, holding up a package of Marlboros, and Lucas shrugs. 

“Lead the way,” he says, and as he follows Berko out the backdoor, an unlit cigarette between his fingers, he thinks that all things considered, he handled this rather well. 

Except, well. There is the minor issue that ever since that fateful night last April, when he gambled away 9000 dollars on a misguided hunch, Joe has not let a single person close the store again on their own. For the past year, the rule has been that there always need to be two of them, and Joe has made it very clear that there need to be two closers _especially_ when Lucas is one of them. 

Of course, why Joe thinks that Mark of all people would be the person to stop Lucas from doing something outrageously stupid is anyone’s guess, but here they are:

It’s Wednesday, well, Thursday really, shortly after midnight, the front doors are locked, the lights in the saleroom are dimmed, and R.E.M.’s _Automatic for the People_ is playing on the stereo. Lucas is sitting on the low stairs leading from Joe’s office down to the breakroom, tying stacks of bills together with rubber bands, and Mark – 

Mark. Is. Not. Looking. At. Him. 

Has not been really looking at him all evening, in fact, stopped looking at him the moment the door closed behind Eddie, the last one punching out tonight before it was just Mark and him. Him and Mark. 

Mark who is not looking at him. 

And that feels just wrong. Because for all that Mark may act like he would forget his own head if it wasn’t properly screwed on, for all that he gets easily distracted by shiny things, when Mark is looking at someone, he is looking at them. Whoever he’s talking to will get his full attention, whether it’s the 150-watt smile or the sad puppy dog eyes.

And Lucas has gotten used to that.

So yes, it stings a little to see Mark’s entire focus directed at Joe’s ugly calculator, which he’s currently studying with an intensity that seems to suggest he’s never seen one before in his life. (It’s not outside the realm of possibility – Lucas remembers Corey informing him after a lengthy attempt at a tutoring session that high school math was definitely not Mark’s strongest suit). 

Meanwhile, Lucas is studying the back of his head over the edge of the couch that Mark is sitting on, left alone with his thoughts and some vivid memories of how he’d been staring down at those red curls on Saturday night, of what they had looked like bopping up and down between his thighs, illuminated only by the faint glow of the emergency exit light. 

The temptation to touch them had been strong, but Lucas had kept his hands firmly around the rails of the fire escape, and not only because he was scared he would lose his balance if he let go. In that moment, it had felt entirely too … intimate, somehow, a thought that seems ridiculous in hindsight, considering that Mark’s tongue was licking up and down the length of his cock at the time. 

Of course, right now Mark is mostly ignoring him, but the question of what those curls would feel like under his palms remains, and because he clearly hasn’t learned from his mistakes and still is terrible at letting sleeping dogs lie, he crosses the two feet of space between them to put his fingers into Mark’s hair. 

Mark freezes under his touch, and for a long moment sits still as a statue while Lucas combs his fingers through the soft curls at the nape of his neck.

Finally he turns his head, but the look on his face is one of trepidation, perhaps even fear, and that really isn’t what Lucas was going for, so because he cannot think of anything else to make it better, he leans in to kiss that worried frown away. 

Mark jumps and squeaks against his lips like a frightened chipmunk, but when Lucas doesn’t pull away, his mouth goes pliant, opens into the kiss, and without breaking contact he shifts until he is kneeling on the couch, one hand on Lucas’ shoulder, the other soft against his cheek. 

Lucas can’t be sure for how long they are kissing. There’s teeth involved and a lot of tongue, spit-slick lips sliding against each other easily, his fingers in Mark’s hair and Mark’s palms against his chest, and then at some point Mark’s fingers tighten around fistfuls of his sweater, pulling until Lucas has no choice but to climb awkwardly over the back of the couch and into Mark’s lap. 

And oh, that is a significant improvement, because it gives his hands more freedom to explore, and they are quick to take advantage: finding the hem of Mark’s t-shirt to slip underneath, sliding up the curve of his back all the way to the top of his spine, then swooping back down and, after a brief moment of hesitation, sneaking into the blessedly loose waistband of Mark’s pants to gently cup his ass. 

Mark exhales sharply and presses forward, bringing them closer together until they are chest to chest, and there is absolutely no room for doubt anymore about the fact that Mark is just as turned on as Lucas is. 

Then all of a sudden Mark dives away, slipping out of his arms and off the couch, and Lucas is still trying to work up the brainpower necessary to decide whether he should be feeling hurt, when he realizes that Mark isn’t going very far. 

In fact, he doesn’t go further than the employee cubbies, but he doesn’t reach for his own – instead he starts digging through Berko’s assortment of personal items, and before Lucas can think to ask him what the hell he’s doing, Mark throws a strip of golden Trojans at him. 

Lucas catches them reflexively out of the air, blinks down at the condoms, then up at Mark. 

“I saw him stock up the other day,” Mark shrugs, as if looting your coworker’s condom stash is a perfectly normal thing to do, and then, in an apparent attempt to be crystal clear about what he’s intending to use them for, he starts to work on opening his belt. 

“Uh,” Lucas says, his gaze fixated on Mark’s casual impromptu striptease routine. 

“Have you done this before?”

Mark pauses briefly, his pants mid-thigh. “Mh-hm,” he nods, but he is looking a little shifty, and Lucas can’t tell whether it’s because he’s lying or because he’s embarrassed to admit that he has. 

And part of Lucas thinks that this is important, that he should stop and ask to verify Mark’s record of fornication, but Mark has stepped out of his pants and is now sliding a pair of purple boxer shorts down his hips. He bends over a little to take them off, and suddenly his ass is right there. It’s a very nice ass, pale and round and firm, and who would have thought that this is what’s hiding under Mark’s standard uniform of oversized shirts and baggy pants … and Lucas loses track of whatever he was worried about and starts to think about how fast he can get his hands back on Mark’s behind. 

Pretty fast, is the answer to that, and this is how Lucas ends up banging Mark on the ugly-ass couch in the record store breakroom, with Mark’s legs wrapped around his hips and his lips against Mark’s neck. Lucas is fairly certain that he would be hearing angels sing, if Mike Mills’ guitar wasn’t drowning them out. 

It’s tempting to fall asleep right where he is, afterwards, with his face pressed into the curve of Mark’s neck and Mark’s body underneath him, warm and solid and relaxed. But even he, King of Bad Choices, can tell that in a Kingdom of Bad Choices, this would easily be one of the worst. 

So instead he pushes himself up to slip into his underwear and hunt down a plastic bag to carefully wrap the condom in, because there’s no way he’s going to leave that kind of evidence behind in the breakroom trash. 

Mark, when he glances over at him, has also gotten up from the couch. At some point he must have slipped back into his pants, although they are still hanging low on his hips, unzipped and unbuttoned, and now he’s holding his crumpled t-shirt and frowning at it as if he has no idea how to put it on. 

Lucas is still holding the plastic bag with the condom and thinks there’s something he probably should say. Berko and Gina, the only ones with meaningful experience in the sex department, had both agreed that it was crucial to say something nice after sleeping with a girl: Something positive about her body, Gina had suggested, though Berko had argued that in the absence of any personalized compliments, a classic “This was really good” or “You were amazing” would certainly work in a pinch. 

The advice has always worked out okay for Lucas, at least no one has ever thrown a shoe at his head.

But it all seems inappropriate, inadequate, inauthentic when applied to Mark, whom he has seen pretty much every day for the past three years, and whom – unless anything major changes – he’s likely to see every day for at least the next three as well. 

By now, Mark has caught on to the fact that Lucas is watching him. He is looking at him expectantly, one shoe in his hand, and Lucas still is not any closer to figuring out what to say. “So,” he starts, thinking that any second now, the right words are going to form in his mouth, but he must have been hesitating a moment too long, because before he can continue, he sees Mark’s face fall. 

“Yes,” Mark says sullenly, “Las Vegas, I know,” and just like that he is out the door, not noticing - or not caring - that he forgot to put on his underwear, and that his t-shirt is inside out. 

“Have you seen Mark?” Lucas asks the next morning, standing in the door to Joe’s office during a lull in the customer stream. In the background, Beck is singing about burning down a trailer park, the song that was clearly written for the soundtrack to the movie about Lucas’ life.

Joe looks up from the stack of invoices he’s working through. “It’s Thursday,” he says, “it’s his day off.”

Lucas knows that already.

“I know that already,” he says. “But when was the last time he didn’t come in anyway?”

Joe weighs his head. “Some people do have lives outside of Empire Records,” he shrugs. “And he stayed late with you last night. He might just be sleeping in.”

Lucas thinks that is unlikely – intimately _knows_ that it’s unlikely because of the phone calls he occasionally gets at eight in the morning after finally stumbling into bed around 4am; phone calls that usually end with him positioning the handset on the pillow next to his head and dozing off again to the sound of Mark’s voice, rambling on about the weird dream that had woken him and what he would eat for breakfast as soon as he was done throwing up. 

So the chance of Mark still being in bed at this time of day is probably larger than zero but also not very high, although Lucas has no intention of telling Joe all that. 

“Hey, can I ask you something,” he says instead, and waits for Joe to look up again from his work. “Why did you pick me?”

Joe frowns and sits up a little straighter. 

“For letting you close the store on your own last year?” He shakes his head. “Lucas, you know I haven’t been mad at you about that since the party that night.”

“I know that,” Lucas says, and shifts from his right foot to his left. “But that isn’t what I was talking about. Back at the group home, I mean.”

Joe slowly sets down his pen. “Why are you asking this now?” he asks carefully. “That was nine years ago.”

“Just wondering,” Lucas shrugs, looking down at his feet. “There was this really sweet little kid … Pete. He would steal candy at the 7-Eleven down the street and share it with me.” 

He clears his throat. “I bet he would have been easier to have around. And I know Mira wanted a girl.”

“Yeah, well, Mira didn’t stick around for long, now, did she,” Joe says gruffly. He folds his hands under his chin and looks up at Lucas with an odd expression on his face. 

“Do you remember how you told me that my shirt sucked the day we met?”

Lucas pulls a face. “You picked me because I hated your shirt?” he asks doubtfully. 

“You were honest. I liked that,” Joe shrugs, then shakes his head. “There wasn’t one particular reason. We just fit. But the fact that you are the kind of person who thinks little Pete deserved a home more than you did? That definitely had something to do with it.” He drops his hands onto his desk. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Yes,” Lucas forces out. His throat feels a little funny. “Thanks. I’ll get out of your hair.” 

“Lucas.” Joe’s voice stops him before he can leave. “In case you were wondering,” he says steadily. “I actually met the couple who ended up adopting Pete. Nice people. They were good with him. I think they had a farm somewhere near Seaford.”

“Oh,” Lucas says. He turns around to look at Joe. “I suppose I’m glad I didn’t end up on a farm.”

“Yeah,” Joe smiles, and picks up his pen. “So am I.”

“So does that mean Joe thinks I’m a good person?” he asks his mirror image later that night around a mouthful of mint-flavored toothpaste. 

The look his reflection gives him manages to be pointedly skeptical, even with all the green foam dribbling down his chin. 

Lucas lowers his eyes and spits into the sink. 

As he rinses his mouth, a piece of fabric on the floor underneath the sink catches his attention. He leans over to pick it up and realizes that he’s holding Mark’s forgotten boxer shorts. He remembers hastily stuffing them into the plastic bag together with the rest of the incriminating evidence before he turned off the lights and locked up the store, but his mind had been on Mark’s rushed departure, and by the time he made it home, he had mostly forgotten that they were there. 

Now he twists the purple fabric between his fingers and is hit by a sudden flashback of watching Mark slide the shorts down over his narrow hips.

He looks back into the mirror, swallowing hard. 

“Not that good of a person,” his reflection says mockingly, and Lucas feels his face heat up with shame.

“Oh, shut up,” he says and switches off the light. 

If he ends up under the covers on his back, jerking off frantically to the mental image of Mark’s hipbones, well. No one is ever going to know. 

“Where the hell is Mark today?” Deb asks during inventory on Friday morning, and Lucas feels something heavy constrict in his stomach at her words.

“We got the new Annihilator album,” she continues, oblivious to Lucas’ inner struggle, and holds up the CD with the devil’s head on the cover that she has just pulled out of a cardboard box. “I thought he’d want to check it out as soon as he can.”

“I haven’t seen him this morning,” Eddie responds and snatches the album out of her hand. “He didn’t call in sick, did he?” he asks, a little puzzled, and Lucas cannot blame him. Mark never calls in sick. Lucas isn’t sure if Mark is even physically capable of being sick. 

“He’s not sick,” Joe says. He glances up from the shipping list he’s holding, then sighs when he realizes that they are all staring at him. 

He pulls a face and drags a heavy hand through his hair. 

“Mark doesn’t work here anymore,” he finally says reluctantly. 

“You fired Mark?” Berko asks, his tone horrified enough to indicate that firing Mark is right up there with running over puppies and pissing on your late grandmother’s grave. 

Lucas would even agree with him, except that he is fairly certain that this isn’t exactly what’s happening here. 

“Of course not,” Joe exclaims, sounding more than a little offended. “He called early this morning to say that he quit.” He coughs. “Apparently he got a job at Walmart.”

“Walmart?” Lucas asks, appalled. The strange feeling in his stomach intensifies. 

Warren scrunches up his face. “Maybe someone was holding him at gunpoint,” he ventures. 

Gina shoots him a skeptical look. “Why would anyone force Mark at gunpoint to work at Walmart?”

Warren shrugs. “Why would Mark work at Walmart without being forced to at gunpoint?”

“Man’s got a point there,” Berko says gravely, and that earns him several gloomy nods. 

Eventually, Deb and Gina volunteer to venture out and gather intel. Joe doesn’t say a word about them missing work, and that’s how Lucas knows he’s worried too. 

Lucas helps Berko and Warren open the store and take care of the first wave of customers, and then, as soon as things start to calm down, he goes to hide behind the building so he can properly freak out in peace. 

That’s where Eddie finds him a little while later, sitting on the low concrete wall of the delivery ramp with his feet dangling over the edge and his head in his hands. 

“Hey,” Eddie says, glancing down at him from behind a curtain of unkempt hair, and there’s something in his voice that has Lucas scrambling to his feet. 

“What’s up,” he says, carefully, hands tucked away in the back pockets of his jeans. 

Eddie pushes his hair out of his face and looks him in the eye. 

“You didn’t punch Mark, did you?”

Lucas blinks, because that wasn’t quite where he expected the conversation to go. 

“Of course not,” he says, aghast. 

“Good, good,” Eddie nods, as if he didn’t expect anything else; but Lucas sees the way his tense shoulders drop a little in relief and realizes just how seriously worried he must have been. 

“Why would you even think that?” he asks slowly, and Eddie shrugs and looks away.

“I thought he might have said something to you.”

“What was he supposed to say?” Lucas frowns, torn between relief that Eddie doesn’t seem to know what they’ve been up to, and the sinking feeling that he’s missing a really important point. 

“I don’t know, man,” Eddie says carefully. “Just – you closed the store together on Wednesday, and now he’s working at Walmart. I just figured, you know. Maybe you guys had an argument.”

“Nope,” Lucas says, shaking his head, “no argument,” and it’s not a lie, not really, but he still feels guilty as shit under Eddie’s suspicious, nervous gaze. 

Eddie squints at him for another long tense moment, then he finally shrugs, his body shifting into a posture of demonstrative disengagement. 

“Never mind,” he says quickly, “forget I said anything.” He grins awkwardly and brushes his hair out of his eyes once again. “Just a mix-up. It’s probably something about his aunt again.” 

He disappears back into the building, and Lucas is left to ponder the fact that Eddie is informed about the whereabouts of Mark’s aunt, when Lucas didn’t even know he had one. 

The girls return an hour later, looking downcast and slightly traumatized. Yes, Mark does, in fact, seem to be working in the produce section at Walmart; no, no one was pointing a gun at him; and no, he didn’t want to tell them why he had suddenly decided that selling cauliflower was preferable to selling CDs. 

“Other than that, he seemed completely normal,” Gina says, then pauses, backtracks. “Well. As normal as Mark ever is.”

Berko scratches his head. “Perhaps he just needed a change in scenery?”

Deb looks at him in disgust.

“If he wanted a change in scenery,” she says pointedly. “We could have just taken him to the beach.”

Debra’s words are still on Lucas’ mind that evening as he’s weaving in and out of traffic on his way to Mark’s house. 

It hasn’t been warm enough yet for swimming this spring, but he does remember the last time they all went to the beach together last year … sometime in late September, he thinks, on one of the last nice weekends after the official season was already over. The beach had been mostly empty aside from their small group, and the Atlantic had already been far too cold. Mark had insisted on swimming anyway, and had returned half an hour later, shivering in his soaked shorts, and when Lucas had said _I told you so_ , he had shaken his head like a dog, droplets of water flying everywhere. 

“You are a danger to society, young man,” Lucas remembers saying, wiping saltwater off his face, and Mark had grinned widely and put his wet cold hand on Lucas’ neck. 

He can almost still feel the shock of ice-cold water dripping down his spine as he now parks his bike on the curb outside Mark’s house and walks up the stairs to the front door. 

Of course, it’s equally likely that what he is feeling is just his nerves. 

“Good evening,” he tells the middle-aged woman in the Star Trek t-shirt who opens the door and resists the urge to raise his hand in a Vulcan salute. 

He can’t risk her getting pissed at him if she decides that he is mocking her. 

People often tend to think that he’s mocking them. They are right about 55% of the time. 

“Is Mark there?” he asks, hands safely tucked away in his pockets. 

She tilts her head. “And who are you?”

“I’m Lucas.” He shuffles his feet. “We work together at the record store.”

If the name rings any bells for her, she doesn’t show it. “Up the stairs, second door to the left,” she simply says, stepping aside to let him in. 

“Might have to knock twice,” she adds. “He has his music on.”

Mark does indeed have his music on, and Lucas winces a little when he recognizes the song. If she hadn’t pointed Lucas in the right direction, he would have been able to find Mark’s room simply by following the sounds of Guns’n’Roses’ _November Rain_. 

At least the door swings open on the first knock, though Mark is clearly expecting someone else: when he sees Lucas, his mouth falls open, but no words emerge. It’s not exactly an enthusiastic welcome, but Lucas thinks it’s probably the one he deserves. 

“Can I come in?” Lucas asks, because the conversation he wants to be having is not meant to be held in a hallway. 

Mark grimaces and throws a look backwards over his shoulder. For one agonizing, horrible moment, Lucas wonders if he has company, but when he glances over Mark’s shoulder into the room, he only sees piles of clothing, stacks of CDs, and an unmade bed with Roger Rabbit sheets. 

“Uh,” Mark says and finally opens the door for him, quickly retreating backwards into the room. In a strange move, he flattens himself against the opposite wall, hands by his side – either expecting to be shot (Lucas hopes not) or trying to hide something from Lucas’ view, although Lucas has no idea as to what it might be.

Curiously, he takes a step closer. Mark darts out of the way in a reflexive reaction that he clearly regrets as soon as it’s done, and when Lucas looks back at the wall again, he finally realizes why. 

Because there, between posters of James Hetfield and Axl Rose, a dogeared pencil sketch of A.J.’s, and old xeroxed flyers of Berko’s first band, is a photo of Lucas taped to the wall.

It’s a nice one, too, as far as a picture of himself can be: he’s sitting sideways on the swing behind the Empire with his arms wrapped around his knees, the warm light of the setting summer sun on his face, and Lucas knows exactly when it was taken.

Mark had shown up to A.J. and Corey’s goodbye party with a reasonably decent camera he had talked someone into lending him for the night, and then had proceeded to dart around the party like a war journalist in a combat zone in his effort to adequately capture the event. At some point, long before the party had started winding down, Lucas had felt the need to get away from the crowd, and he had slipped out the back unnoticed, to be alone with a plastic cup of tequila and his melancholia. Mark had found him hiding behind the building and kept making stupid jokes until Lucas finally cracked half a smile, and Mark had taken advantage and shot the picture, disclaiming that it would go down into history as the day Lucas learned to smile. 

Later, Mark had gotten one of his older moshing buddies to develop the pictures in his private DIY darkroom, and handed them out freely at the store. Lucas had ended up with about ten of the prints (the same ones now resting on top of his fridge), but he doesn’t remember ever seeing this one. If he had given it any thought at the time, he probably had assumed that the photo simply hadn’t turned out quite right. 

“That was more than half a year ago,” he finally says slowly and turns to glance at Mark.

“I am aware.” The look Mark gives him is distinctly frustrated. “I do know how to count.”

“But … “ Lucas shakes his head. “You never said anything.”

Mark rubs his face with the sleeve of his shirt. “I went on live TV so you wouldn’t have to go to prison,” he says, a hint of reproach in his voice. “And you were the first person I told about my band.”

“Indeed,” Lucas says slowly. In his brain, the narrative of a year is currently reconstructing itself. 

“Eddie said you are just terrible at subtlety,” Mark shrugs, looking at his feet. “But I think he was trying to spare my feelings. Because then I finally went down on you, and you told me not to bring it up.” 

Lucas winces. “About that,” he sighs. “You should know by now that I tend to make ill-advised decisions whenever it really counts.” 

Mark frowns in concentration as he unpacks that sentence in his mind. “Oh,” he finally says when he understands, the corners of his lips quirking up into a smile.

“Yeah. That’s okay. I like you anyway.” 

Then he pauses, thinks, and his smile wobbles and falls. 

“I mean, you know,” he says quietly. “Unless you don’t want me to like you.”

“Mark,” Lucas says, “come here,” and reaches out to wrap his fingers around Mark’s wrist. Mark follows easily, lets himself be pulled, and they end up standing close enough that Lucas could be counting the lashes on Mark’s eyelids, their noses almost touching, their mouths only a finger’s width apart.

“I’m sorry I made you wait,” he says before he leans in and tries to convey just _how much_ Mark liking him is absolutely no problem at all. 

He even lets Mark pick the music for their third time. If that isn’t a declaration of feelings, Lucas doesn’t know what would be. 

When Lucas pulls up in front of the store the next morning, Joe is just getting out of his car. Lucas can’t quite decide if his timing is excellent, or really, really bad. 

Behind him, Mark slides off the bike and takes off the helmet Lucas had forced him to wear. 

“Sorry I’m late!” he shouts hurriedly and then slips past Joe into the store, ducking his head like Joe is not going to notice, if only he’s fast enough, that the guy who quit his job yesterday to work for Walmart did just show up to work again. 

“Twenty-four hours late!” Joe calls after him, but he sounds fondly exasperated rather than annoyed. 

Then he turns to look at Lucas with raised brows and a question in his eyes. 

Lucas shrugs. He feels determined and utterly, deeply terrified. 

“I couldn’t just let him keep working at Walmart,” he says. 

Joe huffs a little, as if he’s laughing at Lucas on the inside and trying hard not to let it show. 

“Obviously not,” he agrees, amiably enough. He waits for Lucas to park his bike, then slings an arm around his shoulders in a rare demonstration of fatherly affection as they walk together into the store. 

Lucas keeps very still and forces himself not to ruin it.

“By the way,” Joe says quietly, as they pass Gina and Eddie wiping down the counter in the record section. 

“You have a giant hickey on your neck.” 

“Uhm,” Lucas says incoherently, and now Joe is most definitely laughing at him. 

He lets go of him and walks away, the jerk, leaving Lucas standing in the middle of the store with complicated feelings in his chest and a love bite on his neck, fumbling with the collar of his turtleneck sweater and trying his hardest not to blush. 

When he carefully glances around to see if anyone’s watching, everyone seems deeply immersed in their respective tasks, although the fact that Warren is carefully studying an issue of Bop that appears to be upside down suggests that they are very much paying attention after all.

The only person looking directly at him is Mark, who smiles hesitantly at him over the cash register, fingers twisting anxiously around the lanyard holding his badge. 

Lucas feels the corners of his mouth lift up in response, straightens his shoulders, and starts to walk towards that smile.

Later that day, Gina digs out Joe’s polaroid camera and takes a picture when neither of them are paying attention, then hands the print to Lucas with flourish and a secretive little smile. 

It’s nothing incriminating, just the two of them, heads bent together over a Smashing Pumpkins record. Lucas is in the middle of saying something undoubtedly deeply profound, and Mark is tilting his head to look at him from the side, with rapt attention and bright eyes. 

At home, Lucas carefully takes the picture out of his bag and pins it to the door of his ancient, perpetually humming fridge with an ugly magnet in the shape of a Diet Coke can. 

Sometimes, in the mornings, he’ll kick the fridge door shut, cream for his coffee in one hand, Mark’s chocolate milk in the other, and then pause to look at it until two arms carefully slide around his ribcage to hug him from behind.

**Author's Note:**

> Lucas/Mark Soundtrack:
> 
> [Head over Feet - Alanis Morissette (1995)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iuO49jbovg)  
> [Drive - R.E.M. (1992)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UE7tXDKIus)  
> [Loser - Beck (1993)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgSPaXgAdzE)  
> [Refresh the Demon - Annihilator (1996)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTSIV3umAqE)  
> [November Rain - Guns'n'Roses (1992)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SbUC-UaAxE)  
> [Tonight, Tonight - Smashing Pumpkins (1995)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOG3eus4ZSo)  
> Bonus Track: [Wheel of Fortune - Ace of Base (1993)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoybSNHMtMY)


End file.
